🚀 go-pugleaf

netvegetable wrote:
> On Mon, 01 Jan 2007 12:25:40 +1100, Trevor Wilson wrote:
> 
>>> I'm not a geothermal expert. If you wish to research a geothermal plant
>>> using re-injection technology in a desert environment, I suggest you
>>> find information on the Garlock Fault Geothermal Plant, run by US Naval
>>> Operations at its China Lakes Naval Base, near Ridgecrest, California
>>> in the lower Owens Valley. (Don't ask me why we have a Naval Base in
>>> the desert. But it is there, and they've run a geothermal plant since
>>> 1978-79.)
>> **Yep. Geo-thermal technology is old and proven.
> 
> I think the only revolutionary aspect of Australia's various commercial
> geothermal programs, is that they're using HDR (Hot Dry Rock). Apparently
> there's hot slabs of granite buried in the desert about the place.
> 
> Most geothermal energy projects have been used volcanos. Some have used
> hot springs.


Originally there were some (very small) hot springs (no geysers) in this 
CA neighborhood, but largely they are using the temperature gradient 
along the Garlock Fault, and only incidentally the water as a transfer 
agent. Like many places which try to tap geysers/hot springs, they soon 
found that in the desert environment the local aquifer was  too small 
and fragile to sustain geothermal longterm on an extractive basis. Hence 
the need for re-injection. Not trying to send coals to Newcastle, but 
Australians would do well to examine the geothermal field  based on the 
NZ geysers from an engineering standpoint and learn from the successes 
and mistakes made there.